The Importance of Recording One's Progress

[RussMason]

I have been playing a long time, and I still marvel at hearing old cassettes of me playing songs that I still play. It's not even me on the old tapes; it's a younger player who hasn't quite got it right, but still pretty close.

Recording yourself on a regular basis provides a valuable lesson for how we develop as musicians. As well, it's possible to 'track' the development of a song as it evolves over time. And sometimes the early versions have something good that got dropped along the way.

I still like cassettes for quick recordings. Yes I have some good recording gear, digital decks that have mics and a mixer and phantom power. But using it is cumbersome. The little Sony cassette recorder is a lot easier for an audio journal: just push the record button and start to play. The dynamic range of the guitar is OK for cassette - nothing too high or too low or too loud. And, as I implied earlier, it's fun to go back and listen to tapes made long ago.

The importance of practice.

My old teacher gave me a formula, which has served me well.

Make the difficult easy
Make the easy habit
Make the habit beautiful

What I do - and what you probably do also - is when I pick up a guitar I play familiar chord patterns, songs, riffs, and so on. I play the same things I have played for years as a warm-up, but I always play them slightly differently and discover new ways to voice them.

Today I was playing an old ragtime song and discovered a little embellishment I could play in a simple A chord (lifting off the middle string, briefly, to give an A7). I have played this song for years, but today I made it a little better.

[jackcooper]

Good post. I agree 100%.

I use the record function on my Ipod Nano these days as it's permanently on my person. The sound quality isn't amazing, but it's great for listening back to once in a while.

I agree. For that reason I bought a Zoom H4. Great recording capability and it's quick and quite portable.

[mackdaddie]

Even when you're as bad as I am, recording and video work wonders for exposing lousy habits, and seeing improvement.

[Glennwillow]

Recording yourself is a great tool for improvement. For singers, it helps us determine much more objectively how we are doing on pitch and tone; for instrumental players, recording lets us separate ourselves from the instrument so we can hear breakdowns in tempo or fluidity.

And I like recordings for marking time. I like listening to recordings we (my family and I) made over 20 years ago when we made money making music. My kids are all grown up now, but listening to them when they were younger really takes me back and I enjoy it.

However, I like recording with good gear, good microphones. I bought a small digital recorder with built-in mics, but it's a disappointment; I don't care for the quality of sound at all.

I spent all afternoon in my studio today reorganizing the whole place. I haven't spent much time over there for a couple of years because I have allowed the rest of my family to store too much extraneous stuff over there and fill the place up with "stuff." It got so depressing, I couldn't work over there. Well, over the next week or so I'm going to clear out all that junk and take my studio back.

Now I'm really looking forward to doing more recording again.

- Glenn

[RussMason]

They are just the most fun. A lot of guitar players I know can also play keyboards, and a synthesizer can give you bass, piano and drums on the other tracks. I love it. But it is quite time-consuming!

Good luck with it! Upload your soundfiles to SoundCloud so we can all hear you play.